by Matt James
“So,” Mack said, taking a long pull from her water bottle, “about the fight…”
“What about it?” Ian asked, sitting in his abused armchair.
“You took out those guys without breaking a sweat.”
“Not true,” Ian said, “we always sweat here.” Babo chuckled, but she didn’t. Disappointed in her lack of response, he shrugged it off and continued. “They weren’t exactly an intimidating bunch.”
She crossed her arms and lifted an eyebrow.
“Look, Mack, why don’t you tell me how I beat them. You seem to know all about me.”
“Just what I’ve read on the net,” she replied, sitting on the couch across from him. “Decorated war hero who was badly injured in a friendly fire accident.” Ian noticed how she skirted around the real word and used accident instead.
It wasn’t an accident.
It was an attack.
She continued. “Retired from active duty to travel with his beautiful, smarty-pants spouse, and, well, the rest is history.”
He silently thanked her with a nod. She could’ve brought up Abigail’s death but knew she didn’t have to. It wasn’t hard for him to talk about, he just didn’t like to talk about it if he didn’t have to. She knew the details from public records. He didn’t need to fill her in with the known.
The unknown, however…
“The tunnel,” he said, nervously wringing his hands together. “I, uh, have a little problem with it.”
“He scared,” Babo finished, smiling hard. “Like little baby.”
Ian closed his eyes and rubbed his temples hard. “Thanks, Bob…”
Babo smiled. “You are most welcome.”
Looking back at Mack, Ian rolled his eyes. Sarcasm went right over the big guy’s head sometimes. It was hard enough for Ian to teach the ox English let alone for him to teach the guy all the little nuances that came along with it.
“Scared?” Mack asked, serious.
Ian nodded. “After Abby… After my wife was taken from me, I haven’t been able to go back up there.”
Mack cocked an eyebrow. “Um, have you seen yourself, Ian? You don’t look like someone who’s scared of the dark.”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “It’s not the dark that I’m scared of… It’s what lives in the dark that terrifies me.”
“And that is?”
“Devils,” Babo replied, rooting through Ian’s pantry. “The creatures that attack him and his love.”
Mack turned back to Ian. “The Devils of Madagascar… That’s what you called them in your police report, right?”
He silently nodded and then cleared his throat. “Do you know what it feels like to have your heart ripped out by some monster from hell and then have everyone tell you that it was a figment of your crazed imagination? They prosecuted me for my wife’s death—put me in jail for killing the only woman I ever loved!” His voice cracked. He needed to settle down, or he’d have an ugly-cry breakdown. “I spent a year and a half of my life behind the bars of a rotting prison cell instead of investigating her death for myself. Then, once I was released…” His shoulders sagged. “I didn’t have the courage to go back up there.”
“You’ve done more than you know, Ian,” Mack said, leaning forward. “You said it yourself, you’ve been studying the ecosystem for years now. You learned from the best mind in the business and applied that knowledge here.” She stood. “All you need is a push.”
Ian laughed a tired laugh. “And you’re that push?”
“And why can’t I be?” she asked hands on her thin hips.
Ian held up his hands. “I didn’t say you couldn’t be. I just… Look, if we’re really going to do this, then we need to be extra careful. The local government doesn’t like me poking around the massif anymore.”
“Why? It’s a part of a national park.”
Babo said something in Malagasy and Mack waited for someone to translate for her. Ian cleared his throat. “There have been several more attacks over the last couple of years. Most haven’t become public news yet.”
“Yet?”
Ian nodded. “Eventually, they will, and the whole mountain will be shut down because of it. A lot of the people around here rely on the park for income. You know, tourism and whatnot.”
Mack sat back down. “What kind of attacks exactly?”
“At night,” Babo replied. Then, he covered his eyes with his free hand. “Only in darkness.”
“So, whatever it is, it's nocturnal?”
“Looks like it,” Ian replied, explaining further. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the uptick in seismic activity in these parts.”
“I have. You testified that the attack happened seconds after that monster earthquake occurred.”
“It was the truth. The massif bounced me around like a Ping-Pong ball. Then, they came—three of them. Everything else after that is kind of a blur.”
Part of that was the truth. He remembered watching Abigail get dragged away. That’s when he heard the wet gurgle as something clamped down, piercing her throat. He reflexively told people he didn’t remember so he wouldn’t have to talk about it.
“Well,” Ian continued, “there have been more attacks, each following a separate quake. Most aren’t strong enough to feel in town, though, so it’s hard to know for sure.”
“But you believe it.”
“Like I said before, I lived it.”
She clapped her hands and stood. “When can we start?”
Ian looked at his watched and growled in annoyance. “Not until morning.”
“Morning?” Mack asked, looking at her own watch. “It’s barely two in the afternoon?”
“He’s not available today.”
“Who, this Nash guy?”
Babo sighed, concerned.
Ian waved him off. “You know we can’t do this without him. We’ll need his gun on this one if we’re going on the hunt.”
“What’s so special about this guy anyway?” Mack asked, looking defeated.
“Thomas Nash is what you’d call eccentric.”
Babo laughed and tapped his right temple. “No, he crazy.”
5
As the sunlight waned, Babo said his goodbyes and left, leaving Mack alone with someone she’d just met, in a country she’d never been to before. If it was anyone else sitting across from her, she would’ve felt uncomfortable—especially if they looked the way Ian did. But that’s the thing, Mack didn’t feel any aversion towards him. If anything, she appreciated the company of another American, a former soldier at that.
Plainly, she felt safe.
He proved that he could handle himself in a fight, not that she ever really doubted him. Between the awful attack on him and his wife and then his wrongful imprisonment, Ian Hunt was plainly tough enough to survive out in the primitive wilds. He also showed what he was made of when they were confronted outside of Fossa’s Fangs.
Mack still couldn’t get over the fact that Ian was taken down by a predator while armed and in his prime. Whatever ambushed him that night, it was cunning enough, and capable enough, to do so. After seeing the fear in Ian’s eyes and hearing the emotion in his voice, Mack was all in. There was undoubtedly something dangerous within the Andringitra Massif.
Feet now up on the couch, Mack had her eyes closed as she thought. She wasn’t ready to go down for the night, and the fact that it was still early in the evening would make the effort that much harder. She was naturally a night owl and hated mornings with a passion. Opening her eyes, she turned her head and found Ian staring at her from his worn recliner. His eyes flicked back and forth.
He’s studying me. Even after four beers, he’s still a rock.
“What?” she asked, feeling self-conscious. It had been a long time since a man looked at her with more than a glimpse. At least, it had been a while since she noticed it. Ian seemed to be totally engrossed in her.
His reply was stone-faced and straightforward. It wasn’t at all what
she was expecting. “Why are you here?”
She turned her attention to the ceiling and tried to think of something witty to come back with but found nothing. So, instead, she told him the truth.
“My father believed in your devil.”
“Your father?” He sounded genuinely interested.
Mack turned her head and faced him once more, still laying on her back. “Yep. Dad loved the idea of an ancient creature living somewhere on the island. This was going to be his last assignment before he got sick. I’m just here to finish what he started and make sure he gets the credit he deserves.”
“Cancer?” Ian asked.
“No, complications from pneumonia.” She looked at him. “It’s a long and painful topic.”
“No problem. I know what that’s like.”
She smiled.
“What’s that for?”
“What’s what for?” she asked.
He pointed at her mouth. “That.”
She tried to erase it but couldn’t.
Mack blushed. “I don’t know… I guess it’s nice to finally talk to someone who can relate to something like that. He died a month ago, and I’ve heard nothing but a chorus of ‘I’m sorrys’ and ‘is there anything I can do for yous.’”
“Sounds terrible...”
She rolled her eyes. His sarcasm was thick but playful.
“Har, har… I know they were just trying to be nice, but every time I thought I could, I don’t know, start over, someone would undoubtedly say something about my dad and set me back a step.”
“You were lucky, Mack. All I got was a jail sentence and the label of ‘wife killer.’”
Mack shook her head and wiped a tear from her eye. Ian’s story really did break her heart. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you went through—alone too.”
“Stop that.”
She paused mid-wipe. “Stop what?”
“That…the waterworks. I buried Abby long ago. I miss her more than anything, but if our roles were reversed, I’d want her to move on and live a good life.” He sighed. “Reopening old wounds isn’t going to solve anything.”
She sat up and turned. “They aren’t old for me! I just lost the only man who meant a damn in my life! I’m sorry that I think your wife’s death is sad!”
His stoic face cracked and then softened. “Look, Mack, I’m sorry… I can’t dwell on something I can’t control. I don’t need to go down that road again. You wouldn’t like what you see.”
Her eyebrow raised. “Oh, really?”
He chuckled and reached for the photo on his beat-up coffee table. One of the legs was missing, replaced with a stack of worn, hardback books. A few of the titles were of the reference category while the others were from a variety of fiction authors. “So, Rahonavis ostromi is alive and well in Madagasikara.”
“Madagasikara?” The word felt clunky as it came out.
He nodded, keeping his eyes on the photo. “It’s what the locals call the island in their native tongue.”
“Malagasy, right?”
He looked up. “Yep. Bob taught me a bit a few years back and then I dove into it and learned the rest myself. French is common in these parts too, for what it’s worth.”
Mack nodded at the picture. “What can you tell me about our friend there?”
“What, this?” He turned the photo around. “All right, well, Rahonavis roughly translates to ‘cloud menace bird’ and looks amazingly similar to your prototypical Velociraptor.” He winked. “Only this little guy grew to a maximum size of about two-and-a-half feet in length. The first specimen was found in 1998 by my wife’s mentor, Dr. Catherine Forster. We know very little about this particular species since they were only found twenty years ago. Of course, more and more research comes out every year.”
“My dad came across that picture and theorized that there was a family, or pod, or whatever, of the creatures living somewhere within the national park. It was refuted because of the idea that the bones were new. No one wanted to believe the obvious. It’s like the coelacanth all over again.”
The coelacanth belonged to the rarest family of fish in the entire world and was thought to have gone extinct sixty-six-million years ago. Then again, very little of the ocean has been studied. Should it really shock anyone that a species of animal, once thought extinct, is found alive and well? Mack didn’t think so.
Is that what we have here?
“I agree with him,” Ian said. He motioned to the room around him and laughed. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
They sat in silence for a few minutes before Mack spoke up again.
“What about the more recent attacks?”
He shifted in his chair and leaned forward. “Each of the survivors—and there were only a couple—described the same thing I experienced.” Instead of continuing, Ian shut down and sat back.
“Ian, please. I need you to tell me.”
He bit his lip and blew out a long breath. “I haven’t spoken about what happened in a long time, okay. Just give me a second to work it out.”
She nodded and waited.
“Okay… I put Abby down to sleep after she nodded off in my arms. Then, I walked the area around us, not tired enough to lay down.” He tensed but quickly relaxed. “After the quake, I felt something off in the dark watching me and heard a bunch of scratching noises.”
“Claws on stone.” Mack recalled reading about it in his testimony.
“That’s what I figured, yeah. Anyway, I leveled my shotgun at the thing and then caught two more coming in, one from each side. They were ambushing us, using the one in front of me as a decoy.”
“That sounds like typical Velociraptor behavior to me.”
“If you believe the movies. A lot of that is conjecture, but sure, let’s go with that. Regardless, it showed me that they were smart, brilliant even.”
“They orchestrated an attack and took out someone like, well, you.”
He frowned. “I fought people, not hellish monsters.”
“Terrorists are hellish monsters in my book.”
He grinned. “Touché.”
“That’s when the ground beneath me opened up. I came to a stop in a hidden tunnel and watched a shadowy thing… You know the rest.” He looked away from her, blinking back tears.
Mack did know, and she didn’t make him finish.
Composed, he turned back toward Mack and the two of them locked eyes, and just for a moment, stared at one another, both lost in thought. Ian was the first to flinch. He got up and went to the kitchen, leaving Mack alone with her thoughts.
She could only blush…again, flushed with embarrassment. It wasn’t her intention to flirt with Ian, if that’s, in fact, what he thought she was doing. This was business and—
“Another beer?”
“Please!” she replied, a little too eager.
He turned away and moved off. Mack threw her face into her hands and nonverbally berated herself for acting like a smitten teenager. Mack felt like she was high school all over again.
What the hell is wrong with me?
She needed to focus on the task and not the hired help.
“Do you really think there could be a variant of Rahonavis out there?” She stood and cracked her lower back in several places. “Or could it be something we aren’t thinking of?”
“If it’s not our dino-bird, then it’s something I’ve never heard of. Like I said downstairs, I’ve studied everything this country can throw at me when it comes to predators. Abby believed it, and so did your father from what you’ve said.” He turned, holding too icy bottles. “Last I checked, they were the experts on this shit, not us.”
Mack laughed, but she wasn’t sure if she should be upset instead. Did he just insult her?
He must have seen the look on her face because he explained himself. “What I mean is, that if either of us were as bright as those two, we’d have already solved this little mystery by now.”
Oh, definitely not an insult.
Actually, he was right.
“There’s something about our buddy that I didn’t tell you downstairs.” Ian stayed quiet but looked none too pleased to have something kept from him. “You said that the Rahonavis grew to a maximum size of about three feet in length.”
“What about it?” he asked, sounding snippy.
“This one measured almost twice that.”
“Bullshit,” he snapped, not believing her.
“It’s not bullshit, Ian. It was confirmed and then thrown out.” She sat forward more. “We know this thing is real, that’s half the battle. And our proof is based on this single photograph.” She tapped the picture on the coffee table.
Ian’s combative demeanor diminished the more he thought about it. Mack held out her hand, silently asking for the bottle. Eventually, Ian acquiesced to her request and handed it over.
“Eh, screw it, why not?”
They clinked their bottles together.
“Cheers,” Mack said, smiling.
“Mirary fahasalamana e,” he said, not bothering to translate the toast for her, “Plus, up there, the middle one, it was strong enough to do what it did.” He tipped his chin at the photo. “Maybe the things that attacked us were some of these guys? All I saw was a shadow and teeth.” He shifted. “Whatever the hell it was, it was big and it—”
“Responded to the tremors,” Mack interrupted, wide-eyed.
“Bingo.” He sat, looking very impressed. “Birds, which are related to our friend here, are very sensitive to planetary events—earthquakes included. Imagine living underground and having the sensory system of a bird with the appetite of a friggin raptor. Then, imagine what would happen if the earth around you began to twitch.”
“Sensory overload…”
“Exactly,” he said, taking a long pull.
Mack did the same, happy that Ian had more of the brew that they had down in Fossa’s Fangs. The one thing Ian didn’t have was air conditioning. Luckily, the late afternoon sun wasn’t too bad. Midday in the summer months must’ve been brutal.
Thankfully, there was a ceiling fan. It’s what Mack stared at to fall asleep later that night. The leather couch was broken in and was much more comfortable than her seat on the bus. Her lower back was aching from the ride to Ambalavao. But it was nice to have two seats all to herself the whole trip there, that much she could admit. She’d ridden in one too many crowded buses in her lifetime, sitting next to someone that either didn’t speak English, or smelled, or was just in a foul mood. It was an awful, and lonely, way to see the world sometimes.